The Graffiti Reader

Introduction

This proposed, virtual collection is my selection of the most interesting and useful English language scholarship on graffiti, to be taken as a broad introduction to academic approaches to graffiti and as a supplement to the vast popular literature. Since the advent of mainstream graffiti publishing in 1980s and the international success of Subway Art (1984) and Spray Can Art (1987), the following decades have seen a proliferation of sub-cultural and popular publications about the many forms of graffiti, from ‘zines and movies, to memoirs and websites. However, writing that develops critical and conceptual responses to graffiti are less common. The selection here cover the key areas in which graffiti has been theorized. As this is an invented collection, I’ve also included two of my own essays, in areas where little writing exists. Some caveats: my collection is skewed towards the analysis of hip-hop style graffiti that originated in the US and its international adaptations, though a thorough history of this global spread, as detailed in books such Nicholas Ganz’ Global World: Street Art From Five Continents (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004) remains to be written. There is also llittle mention of the full effect of new media and the Internet on the production and reproduction of graffiti or the history of graffiti as an ethnographic research method, such as the pioneering study of latrinalia lead by sex researcher Alfred Kinsey in 1953. Comments and additions welcome.